Minecraft with mods
by summonedxskull
Summary: The first story of 3 about a guy and his friend who love modding minecraft. when a mysterious plug-in sends them into the game, they must do all in their power to defeat dark creatures, and discover the difference between truth and lies. each book in this trilogy will be ending on a cliff hanger (because i know people love cliff hangers) so don't expect a clear ending.
1. Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER: I do not own minecraft, mojang, 4j studios, or anything like that. this isn't my game, you know the usual disclaimer stuff.

Act 1: the start of it all

Chapter 1: time for introductions

Hello. I am Jake, and I will be telling you a tale about my past. Most of it was confusing jibber-jabber full of dragons and chainsaws, but there is a bit of it I can tell you. It all started… well, it started like any normal day. But as you are probably guessing, this wasn't a normal day. Now where was I… oh yes, it started like any normal day, but then…

"Jake? Jake, are you listening to me?" Dan's voice woke me from my thoughts that I had fallen deep into. "Jaaake, helloooo, anyone there?" I realised I really should reply. "Yeah, sorry, I was just…lost in thought." I said. "Whoa, that's a rare occurrence. Thinking about your perfect life with another random girl, or about what we are actually doing?" he said, his snide remark not surprising me at all. "Ha ha, very funny." I replied. "And what exactly are _your _chances of a girlfriend?" I knew he wouldn't be able to get back from that.

He deflated slightly then, but within a few seconds his head blew up to its full extent, as usual. "Well anyway, let's get back to the task at hand, eh? Get over there and start building the left battlement. This castle isn't going to build itself." If you didn't already guess, he was over at my house and we were playing Minecraft on our public server.

"I'm busy right now, remember? We need to pack some equipment into our packs, for that plugin, the "adventure's dreams" thing, it was your idea, and a good idea at that, so don't do all that "we need to build the castle now" stuff on me, because we have the best grief protection plugins, so no-one can even get near this place. We have all the time in the world for this castle."

He realised I was right there, and given a second while the elevator (we had a LOT of plug-ins) to take him to the store room, he took a look at the clock to realise it was almost 10:30 and he needed to sneak back into his house. "Oh damn, got to go. Party finishes in 10 minutes down the street, and if I'm not home, we won't be able to go on the adventure."

"Oh yeah." I said. "I'll do some last minute things, notify everybody, and close down the server. Oh! Before I forget, this friend of mine told me about this cool new plugin, and he sent me a free copy file. We'll be the first to try it, want to have a look?" "Sure," he said. "Not like we have anything else to do." "Cool." I was going to anyway. It's much better with him though. "The file needs converting. I'll do it overnight." He chuckled to himself. "What?" I said. This was something that wasn't normal for him. Finally he spoke. "I was just wondering what the _non-pathetic _people are doing right now."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The plug-in begins

I woke up pretty early (as usual) and went to the computer to install the converted plug-in and start a private LAN world for me and Dan to look at it without the whole public server finding out about this mod. He was around in 15 minutes when I texted him and we activated the plug-in. then the lights went out.

For a few moments it seemed like I was sleeping, but knowing I was sleeping. A weird thing, that. Then I saw some colours, merging and clashing, splitting and mixing. I don't mean to brag, but with an IQ of 153, I figured out straight away what the shapes were forming. Squares, rectangles, becoming 3D, taking form... It was strange I didn't really feel much seeing I was in Minecraft. When I could see myself I was counting myself lucky that I wasn't made of blocks.

Walking around a bit, I saw Dan lying under a tree nearby. I felt a measureable amount of annoyance with the fact that he was wide awake, eating an apple, with a crafting table and some tools lying around him, and he just left me out in the open. "Hey! You son of a…" he stopped me there. "Calm down bro, if you looked behind you, you would see that I build a small hut around you while I went hunting."

Upon inspection, I realised I was right. A small wooden hut, with what seemed like an extension being built next to it. "Oh… right. So, what have you been up to while I was unconscious?" He stood up then, putting half his tools into a backpack, then the rest into another, and tossed it to me. "There you go. With you in fairy land, I went hunting and mining a little. We have some stone tools, plenty of food, and some shelter with beds to sleep in." I noticed that this would be my only gap to speak here.

"Okay then. What's the extension you're building?" he was practically luminescent then. "That, my friend, is the beginning of our great mansion. I thought we'd start with the hallway, and then split off into the kitchen, lounge, dining room, store room, and then head up stairs with our bedrooms, the library- "okay, okay, I get it, I get it. You have some plans. So let's think about our situation. We are in Minecraft, we have our plug-ins, and we have a safe place to stay. Wait… did you have your watch on?" he was surprised at my sudden question.

"Yeah, I always do. Why?" he was quite smart as well, but sometimes, he was just… aghhh. He needed me to spell out things all the time. "Look at your wrist." He understood at last, and just like I thought, he had his watch on. "Time?" I asked. Unfortunately it was a Minecraft clock, so it took a moment for him to see. I thought for a second. Then checked my pockets. I had:

Spare batteries, which crumbled into redstone dust when I touched them.

Some break crumbs, which turned into wheat seeds.

A travel compass, which would be pretty useful.

And the weirdest item, a Lego sword, which became a full sized iron sword when I touched that.

I noticed he was looking at me, and said: "8:30."

"What?"

"You asked the time, remember? Its 8:30pm."

"Oh, right."

His pockets were empty, and we decided that since we had nothing else to do, and we were really tired, to go to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Inland

We woke in the early hours and decided that, against Dan's original wishes, to take down our half built house so we could travel further inland. During packing we thought about some stuff. "So, uh," he said. "What's our plan? We know all the plugins are on this world, and we know they make the game a lot more difficult." It took me a while to reply, since my thoughts were on another fact. "Yeah, they are. But we are experts on this. And most of those plugins add stuff that we do all the time in real life. What I'm worried about is that mysterious mod my friend sent me. You don't think… that sent us here?"

He took his time answering, turning his attention to the last few blocks of the house to break them. "maybe." He said. "I mean, what else could it have been? It is very mysterious, you turn on a mysterious plug-in, everything goes dark, and then we wake up here? I mean, come on, what was your doubt?" I didn't reply to that. I was busy thinking about the settings I'd put on this world. I put on:

Generated structures, useful if we come across a village

Normal difficulty, we haven't played peaceful in months

Advanced HUD (a plugin), which means instead of an inventory we have just our hotbars, unless we have backpacks, which we do

Corruption, probably the most dangerous plugin, since it causes mobs to mutate and fuse.

"We should look for a village." I said.

"Why?"

"Because," again, he agitated me. "A blacksmith chest could be useful, and the villagers on this world may know something. Remember, there was that thing about mobs each having their own language? Like Endermen speak backwards and distorted?" He smirked, and checked his clock. "Well, we better be able to understand them. It'll take years to communicate if all we hear is "hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm." Right?" We laughed for a while at the thought of that. And then we set off.

After a while it started getting dark, and we were going to set camp for the night, but then we saw a light nearby. Could've been just a lava pit, but, it was quite a big light. So we headed over there, hoping we'd get there before mobs spawned. But as we got closer, we noticed the grumbling, the creaking of bones, and an arrow shot. Not having chance to see what shot at us, we ran to the nearest house, and almost reached the door when a shape leapt from the shadows, and knocked me to the ground. My pack skid across the ground, and Dan grabbed it, before pulling out his sword and tossing both packs through the open door of the house. He charged headlong at the creature as its features became clearer, and I saw the hideous mutation of a spider jockey that seemed to have melted into the spider.

Its hissing head reared back to bite me, just as Dan's sword swung past and sliced into its neck. The head flew off its distorted body, and smacked into the legs of a nearby zombie. Its screech of pain attracted the attention of the other mobs, and we only had a few seconds to dash into the house and close the door. The zombies bashed and smashed at it, so we did as best we could to block it with some planks. We had a moment to catch our breath, and he noticed another door, probably leading to the house's bedroom. He went to investigate while I sat for a second on the cold wooden floor. After a few minutes I was worried. Village houses are small, so that room couldn't have taken seconds to look through. I went in, and only caught a glimpse of his unconscious body before I was hit full in the face, and everything went dark.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: rude awakening

Bit of a surprise, eh? Anxious to find out what hit me? Well, here you go.

"Uh… ah, my head…" I opened my eyes and saw a stone room lit with a single torch and some light from a door in the corner. I wondered if this was some kind of prison, but then again, you wouldn't use a normal wooden door for that. Then, I heard a voice, and noticed someone in the room with me. "Dan? That you?" his face became clearer, and he used his usual smirk when I started getting up. "Yeah Jake, it's me. You'll never guess what happened." I rather believed I would. "The generator plugin that makes villagers much smarter and generates a castle somewhere on the map?"

He deflated. "Lucky guess. Yeah. They don't use that village, it's like an outpost, there's a tunnel leading here from there. They use that place to look for wandering villagers." That answered most of my questions but one. "So why did one knock us out?" none of the reasons were an explanation for that. "Well," he said. "He didn't trust us. You know, 2 players mysteriously appear out of nowhere? They saw us yesterday, you know. Watching us from the trees as we set off in this direction."

After stretching a little and walking off our head pains, we walked out of the room into a long decorative corridor. "So who did you talk to to get all this information?" I said.

"The guy who hit us." His reply was shorter than I'd have liked. We didn't talk as we walked down the winding corridors and staircases until we came to a large room, filled with villagers in varying clothing of knights and courtiers, and servants going back and forth with food and drinks. I forgot how cool mods were, I thought, as we approached a villager in robes who sat at a small table in the corner.

"So… you are interested, are you?" His question surprised us as we hadn't even met him before, so we didn't know what he thought we might be interested in. "In what?" I asked. "An adventure." He replied. "An adventure to lands far and wide, to defeat the great beast." We were a bit creeped out here, and we found out "the beast" was a boss in a board game he pulled out from under the table, which surprised even us, us, who know all about these mods and plug-ins. "must be an update." Dan mumbled.

After telling the old man we didn't want to play his game, he told us that a friend of his needed help with something. His friend was the architect for "Irilm", the leader of the castle. He was unable to think of any ideas and needed something to help him fix his "writer's block", so to speak. He said to drop by a house in the corner of the castle, where Pilotes (the architect) would be working in his study in the basement.

We arrived after enjoying a quality meal at the castle kitchen before grabbing our refilled packs (we had decided to leave after this job), and knocked on the door. A voice from within called: "it's open, come straight down, and lock the door behind you!" his shout at the end surprised us. When I think about it, a lot of things surprised us back then. Anyway, we went downstairs, and walked straight into a tripwire. The rest was a blur.

Neither of us know exactly what happened then, but we know that we woke up in a dirty cell, from outside the bars was chanting and cheering. "Oh God," we said.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Not alone

Confused? Well, your answers were probably given in the name of this chapter. As it turned out, we weren't the only ones on this world. I realised that for the few seconds before we were pulled into the game, someone joined our server. And it was someone who I didn't recognise the name of. When I thought about it, I could remember the name clearly. _**Irilm.**_ The one who rules this castle. There was another player on this map, and we began to wonder if it was him who brought us into the world. I decided to tell Dan a secret about this plug-in.

"Dan, it wasn't a friend who sent me this." He turned his head straight at me in an instant.

"WHAT?" I suppose I should have suspected his anger. After all, I said because it was a trusted source, I didn't check the file for bugs. I didn't check, because I was too lazy. "Before you came over," I said. "I got a message. From a guy called KingIrilm64. He said it was something Mojang was developing and he was looking for people who played Minecraft a lot, people who wouldn't deny the chance. Well, I suppose that bit was true, but I don't know how in hell I could have ever believed that guy worked for Mojang. I was just… stupid."

"Yeah, you were." We said nothing for a while. Then, noticed during our "conversation" the cheering had stopped. Now there was a steady clash of metal on metal, and then there was a horrifying noise, and the crowd we couldn't see began screaming and shouting, and there was the noise of things falling and hundreds of footsteps as people came running right past our cell door. We realised this might be our only chance to escape.

"Hey! Hey! Help us!" We called in unison. Someone stopped and noticed the key hanging on a wall. They were just about to unlock the door when someone in the crowd stopped him.

"Don't let them out!" he shouted. "You saw the posters as you came in didn't you? All these people are criminals! Wanted for murder! Leave them to die!" That was enough to convince him to fling the keys away and run with the rest of the crowd. Unfortunately for them, it was too late. A blaze of fire burst from round the corner and roasted all of them before they could get away.

The horrifying roar sounded again, and we saw what caused it. A hideous mix of blaze and enderman, which explained the fire and the ability to get in front of them so quickly. Its twisted face was of a blaze, but with burning purple eyes. The body was mostly the long black of an enderman, but with the metal rods stuck through it like pins of a voodoo doll. Its hands were constantly on fire, and the noise it created was like a grotesque fusion of screaming and a high pitched wail. It seemed ready to lunge at us for a second, but then stopped, noticing us, the place we were.

It seemed to look _into_ us, judging us, examining us. It cocked its head, and then changed its expression. Its crooked mouth seemed to turn up, as much as a kind look as it could muster. It then disappeared, reappearing moments later, key to the cell in its hand. The place outside the cell was so destroyed we couldn't tell what it used to be. The other cells were filled with burned bodies, why did it spare us? We couldn't use the main exit to this place, we'd never get away. So we followed a long thin corridor, until we saw light, moonlight. We stepped out, into a beautiful night scene of hills and mountains. Looking back, the castle was a dot in the distance. Strange, why would this place be so far away?

I had my only chance to ask a question to the ender blaze then. "Why did you spare us?" it looked at me, then pulled from its body a blaze rod, then started to glow. The other rods seemed to explode inside it, and from it erupted a bright light. After the light faded, there was no longer an ender blaze there, but the two separate creatures. The blaze evaporated into the air, leaving the blaze rod behind. The enderman looked at us, and smiled, saying "ew wonk uoy, uoy evah eht tfig, eybdoog. And then it disappeared into the night. "What did he say?" Dan asked.

"Endermen talk backwards, Dan, think about it."

Spoiler alert: the enderman said "we know you, you have the gift, goodbye."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: The gift

Sorry for the late post guys.

Dan and I didn't have time to hang around to think about what "the gift" was, it was late at night, and we didn't have any equipment, since it was left behind in that place that was probably crawling with guards now. Before we left to find a place to go, we sealed the exit as best we could with some dirt. As we set off into the shadows, crouching behind trees and bushes as we saw mobs, Dan had one of his great ideas. "Hey Jake, do you think that gift was control of mobs? I mean, that enderman, we looked him straight in the eye. And he did nothing. I'll find out."

I suddenly realised he wasn't joking when he walked up to a creeper, swaggering in his traditional way, and said "'Sup, bro? Want to help us out?" The creeper stared for a moment, cocked its head, and just went "Sssssss…" His face turned to terror. It enlarged, began to glow, and I just had a couple of seconds to get to Dan before… BANG! Rocks and chunks of Earth flew around me. I couldn't see anything, just a whirlwind of dust and gunpowder, stinging my eyes and going into my lungs, burning them. The last few moments of consciousness I had were a hazy nightmare.

It seemed like days that I was unconscious for. Lights and shapes continuously crossed my vision; I thought they'd never end. But they eventually subsided, and I could see clearly where I was. A small iron room, looking in some way like an emergency bunker: furnace, crafting table, chests, a bed, and an iron door. When I was able to stand, I discovered I couldn't leave; the door was locked. So I decided I might as well look through the chests. They were empty. I had nothing in that place.

I don't know how many days I was there. No clock or communication, the only way I knew there was someone else was that every once in a while a dispenser above the door would drop food in. I had so much time on my hands; all I could think about was what had happened to Dan. Had he survived? Was he out looking for me? Or was he in a cell like this, wondering the same things about me? Well, that wasn't all I thought about. I thought about the gift. What could it be? Dan had already eliminated one possibility, maybe at the cost of his own life.

Days passed. Maybe weeks, there was no way to tell. I realised I had completely ignored one possibility. Irilm had found us. Unconscious in a crater, and took us to be left in a cell to rot. But, I knew that wasn't true soon later, when the package arrived. For a long time i had figured out the time by when the dispenser dropped food, so as I sat under it one morning, it didn't shoot out food. It shot out a book. This one break of irregularity gave me hope anew.

_You have been in here for a long time. It's time to leave, Jake. It's a real shame you didn't already figure out how to leave though. And we thought you two were experts. Well, he is better than you apparently, since he has been waiting for days in the main room for you since he escaped. Everything you need is in this room. Good luck._

_The Truth teller_

This filled me with more questions. What was in here that could help me? What was this place if not a prison? And who was The Truth Teller? I chose to ignore these for now. I carefully examined the room. And I burned with realisation of my idiocy. I never checked the furnace. And when I looked, there were 3 iron ore, and 2 sticks. Upon finding these, it was easy to know what to do next. Since a plugin, it was possible to burn anything made of wood to smelt things. I switched the iron ore to the main oven, and put the chests into the fuel compartment. A few minutes later, I had 3 ingots. I crafted these and the sticks into a pickaxe, and spent a short moment grabbing the bed and then, smashed my way through the door. Time to find Dan.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: More truth and more questions

As I burned down the long stone corridor, my mind raced through what had happened, and why. Who had kept me in there so long, and why? Was it about the gift? What was this gift, and the most aggravating thing of all, why had Dan escaped days ago, and just stayed where he was instead of looking for me? I didn't have time for any more questions, as I reached the end of the corridor. All there was was a small, stone button. "What the hell." I muttered, and hit it.

The floor gave way beneath me, and I realised how Dan hadn't got to me. The cell was high up in a mountainside, and as I fell through it, down deeper and deeper into the depths, it became obvious that Dan would never find the cell with hundreds of pickaxes. He was deep into the core of this mountain, while I was at the top. From where I was a swung my body weight to somehow avoid breaking all my bones on the stone at the bottom, but I couldn't. I was going to die. And then there was water.

The ground opened up just before I hit it and I dropped through the gap into a large pool of water. Then another wall opened up and I climbed onto the one small area of stone to leave. The things I passed were incredible. The first was an iron room which seemed normal, but the second I stepped out I was completely dry. The next ones included:

A shimmering golden statue of some deity, looking like some twisted fusion of god and devil. There was what seemed to be laboratories that I passed, unable to enter past the glass wall. It amazed me. There were players dashing back and forth, mixing potions, examining animal corpses, and all around looking like some evil scientists. They didn't seem to notice me. But of course there was an explanation. One of our mods included one way glass, this corridor was probably so the owner of this place could watch the workforce while they worked.

There was so much more I wish I could tell you, but I need to get to my point. The most magnificent of all was a shimmering tainted glass bridge, beautifully reaching over the vast expanse of a cavern, below were mine carts dashing back and forth, scaffolding and bridges across, and people mining out precious gems and minerals. I nicknamed this area the rainbow bridge, for further reference. I finally reached the end of the corridor, and there was a single door. I went through, and inside was Dan.

I didn't let him notice me yet, I studied him, seeing what he'd been through. There were several small burns on his hands and face, and a bandage across his forehead. He had a cut in his arm, but old and almost healed. His clothes were ragged and torn, and he just lay in the bed, looking up at the ceiling, his eyes glazed over as if he were asleep. His breathing was normal, but he couldn't have been in a very good condition, since his pickaxe and food were scattered on the floor around the space between the door and the bed. He must have headed straight for it when he first got here. But maybe he'd recovered since then.

"Dan, you okay buddy?" I startled him, and his upper body lurched up from the bed to look at me. "Jake? Thank god, I need your help. I'm not going to last much longer here on my own. I'm so glad you're back. I had no idea where you were. Help me up. We got to go." I didn't have time to question his seriousness. I grabbed some food so we'd last a bit longer, then lifted him from the bed, and began moving slowly out of the room, then through the corridor. As we reached the rainbow bridge, I saw that the miners were higher up than before, and not mining, just climbing higher, until when about five or six of them were equal to the height of the bridge, they leapt across and started running after us.

I picked up speed, and lifted Dan onto my back, so his feet wouldn't be dragging on the floor slowing us down, and reached the end of the bridge. I wasn't fast enough, and one of them grabbed Dan and hauled him back, and threw him into the middle of the bridge. They lined up and faced me, wielding pickaxes and swords alike. One of them pressed a switch in his hand, and I heard pistons. I looked down and saw that under the floor of the entire glass corridor was lava, covered by stone before but now there was only a thin layer of glass protecting us.

I couldn't leave Dan, not now, not ever. I charged forward, wielding both of our pickaxes, swinging them around me with all my strength, and surprised by my sudden courage, they were unprepared for it. I hit one full force in the chest, and he was impaled on it, before I let go and him and the pickaxe were launched away. Another hit the other pickaxe from my hand, and I was left before the four remaining men, and then laughed as they prepared to finish me off, Then I a saw a shadow behind them. "Go to hell." It said.

A pickaxe smashed the glass of the bridge, and they fell into the abyss below. The figure leapt before he fell, and grabbed me, hauled me to my feet, and as the glass floor of the corridor began cracking and splitting, simply said, "run."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: He was right

My lungs burned in agony as we ran down the corridor, hearing the sounds of smashing glass and hissing lava as it melted away. Every once in a while we had to jump as chunks fell in front of us. I assumed we would just run to the exit, but the hooded man opened his robe and took out large quantities of TNT, before throwing them into every window of the labs. I looked straight ahead, not wanting to see what was going to happen to the people inside. We were just about to reach the end of the glass path, when the entire floor fell as one piece.

We only had a split second to act, and I used it to fling the iron door from the cell out onto a piece of glass before it fell, and grab onto it, only a hair's width away from the lava. The man pulled out ladders, and stuck one to the wall, catching it perfectly and keeping exact balance. He then sent out a flurry of them at the walls, leaping from ladder to ladder without a seconds thought. When he reached the secure stone floor, he tossed a few to me and nodded, then went out a door with sunlight streaming through. As he went, I saw burns on his hands and the edge of a bandage on his head.

I couldn't get across the ladders as easily as him, but when I reached the door and headed out, the mysterious man with Dan's injuries was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Dan was there, lying by a campfire, cloak and hood gone too. There was a scrawled note by him.

_Jake,_

_You will be wondering who I am. I cannot tell you exactly, you must find out yourself. But I can tell you some of the answers to your questions. Irilm is not behind this, he is nothing in this. Do not speak to Dan about this occurrence, he needs to learn himself. To him, he simply was knocked out. I do not have long. The most important thing you need to know is that Dan was right, partly right at least. What he did activated the gift. But you must not tell him that, so whatever you do, do not let this letter be seen by him. A map is attached to this; you will see me again at the end. But it will be a long journey. _

_Good luck._

Dan groaned. I looked over to him. He was waking up, but his burns were gone. The bandage had fallen down from his head, but there was no injury there either. When he had woken up, I told him an adjusted version of what happened. Then I showed him the map. It seemed that there were many paths to follow, so we decided to take a rest, and decide which one to choose in the morning. The three locations we could go to next were:

Imraldrec Village

Bottomless Swamp

Yarlem Canyon

It was very difficult to decide, since according to the map, Yarlem translates to "Bone-filled" and Imraldrec to "murderers"


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Activation of the gift

Me and Dan left our small camp at first light, and set off in the direction of Imraldrec village, since "bone-filled canyon" and "bottomless swamp" seemed a bit inescapable. So, if we were going somewhere dangerous, we might as well go to a place where we can fight the danger. So we went on our way. The village was far to the west, and we stayed several nights in caves. Only one was worth mentioning though, the night of the hunter.

We were sleeping in a small hole in the side of a hill, about a day's journey left to the village. Well I say "we" were sleeping, I mean Dan. I was on watch, when, I heard a strange noise. It was like rattling bones, so at first I assumed skeletons outside, and realised it was Dan's turn to keep watch, so I woke him, and went to sleep myself. Now for the first time, you will see things how he did.

Hello, I'm Dan, and I was sitting on a rock by the fire, my stuff laid out in front of me, trying to think of some organisational method that would work, when there was a noise. I looked around, there was nothing in the cave with us, and the entrance was blocked, so there was no way anything could get in. But then I realised, there was one way something could get in. and I prayed the noise was not what I thought it was. But I and Jake didn't have the luckiness we needed. The rattling of bones and hissing of spiders, followed by a string of smaller, lower pitched hisses. I ran to Jake and shook him. "Jake, Jake! Come on get up! It's the…" the floor underneath us burst from an explosion, and we fell down into a deep cavern.

As we passed cave entrances along the way down the pit, the mobs hissed and roared at us and shot arrows in our general direction. Jake was stirring from his sleep after the explosion; he must have been so tired to not have woken immediately. But as he did, a shadow leapt from one of the caves, and it was one of the things that took us down here. A fusion mob, the terrifying mix of a spider jockey melted into the spider, and green with the morphed body of a creeper embedded into its back. Its hideous features only showed for a second before grabbing Jake in mid-air and taking him across the pit into another cave. I continued to fall deeper until I hit a large web. My items fell after me into the web, sticking deep into the surface, rendering them useless to me.

And back to me, Jake. When the creature grabbed me and I was flown down a long tunnel being held by its ribs against its chest, I felt something inside me twitch. Like an external force, pushing its way into me, but it seemed familiar, like it had been there all along. I felt a presence, and everything around me didn't matter. Not the hungry eyes of mobs looking out at me, not even the light growing in size as we got closer. My mind melted into another thought, a much more important thought. I saw nothing; only black, then a form shaped itself in front of me, a figure, and human. He spoke. "Before I begin, do not tell Dan what I say here."

"Are you the man from before?" I asked. "You said I wouldn't see you until the end of the journey." He looked at me with no expression, before continuing. His form changed, and he took on the shape of… me!

"No, I am not him, nor did I write that letter. I learned about it at the same time as you. But it does not matter. I am not you, but I am part of you. You know that you have a gift, and this has activated it. Our gift is different to Dan's. It has been activated by this encounter. And you must listen to me, because only you can understand what I am about to say, and only you can do it.

I cannot tell you what he said. Because the language uses sounds a human cannot create. I couldn't even tell you his name. So I'll call him "Hunter". He spoke to me how to use my powers. But only when he activated them, his judgement was ruling over the gift we had. The creature stopped moving. It hadn't reached the light yet, but it threw me away from itself, screeching and hissing like, like it was scared of me. Hunter and I were in mutual agreement. I felt the gift's power coursing through me, and my hands felt new strength I had never felt in anything before. A thousand eyes lit up the cave and rose from their hiding spots. It was Time to show them what the gift did.

And back to me, Dan. As I was stuck in the cobweb, hissing and footsteps came closer to me from the caves around me. Hundreds of red eyes stared at me from the darkness, and they came out from the caves to get to me. In terror that I was unarmed and stuck in webs, I panicked and reached for my sword. I couldn't reach and when it was almost in my hand, it slipped further into the web. I was embedded in the cobwebs, unable to even lift my head and the spiders were right ahead of me, I said my last prayers to myself, and then they all were destroyed.

The power raged through me like fire. Destroying the creature was child's play. I raced down the cavern, following the noises of hissing and footsteps. I leapt out of a cave, landing on a spider and crushing its skull with my feet. The others jumped at me, unable to comprehend my gift. A single punch to each one sent them spiralling away before smashing against the walls and their insides getting pierced on the spiked stone. Dan's eyes flashed back and forth, clearly not recognising me under the robes I wore. I was so quick-footed on the webs that my feet didn't stick. The monsters were no match for me. No creature is a match for Hunter. I grabbed Dan and ran vertically along the wall of the pit, reaching the cave we started at in a short time. Single TNT left my hands, eliminating the spiders following behind. It took the few hours left to reach the village. And how friendly the people there were.


	10. chapter 10

Epilogue

Upon reaching the village, Jake and Dan met a small group of people, living in the houses and doing well for themselves farming food and building a defensive wall. During sleep in the spare house they now owned, Jake was told by Hunter that they cannot continue yet. They stayed for many months, finished the defensive border, and established a castle to build out from, which became a town after two years of hard work. They never forgot their adventures, and they never forgot that they would one day have to continue the journey they were told to follow. That day came soon, The Finished town's Anniversary.


	11. Chapter 11

ACT 2: On the road again

Chapter 1: a visit from a stranger

"And after two years of prosperity and work, we accomplished this Castle and town, and achieved something that we had desired for a long time in our journey, Peace and quiet." Dan finished up his story with the children of the town, and saw me watching him from a short distance. He headed over, his usual smirk on his face, but it hadn't been usual back then, in our journey, we never smiled. "It's funny, isn't it?" He said.

"What do you mean?" I asked. I assumed a joke and braced my sense of humour for impact. "When we last played Minecraft, we were building this exact castle, and now we finally finished, and it's STILL not how I wanted it."

We headed up to the battlements to look at the view of the valleys and mountains around the Great spire of the tower we stood upon. The market stalls beneath us were ripe with the bounties of the harvest, all of the great things that arrived in the world when the update arrived. We knew it was an update because everything froze except us, and our eyes were lit up with lines of code, all we could see was code. Then the lines appeared that we thought were awesome, the update that changed the world.

Soon after the fishermen began finding more varieties of fish, and tall and new plants began decorating the town and its surroundings. The buildings gained for variety as new trees gave new colour to the town, and we had compact ice or "never melt ice" as we called it. We kept a supply in the kitchens for our cold drinks. It was a beautiful world made even better with the update. Anyway, I went on a tangent there, the market stalls were ripe with fish, meat, fruit, and soups. The potions stalls were popular this time of year for miners, (lava related) and many different stalls were scattered around the marketplace, full of visitors from other towns and villages.

The winding road that went into the stretching fields ahead was empty of travellers, but there was a single figure walking down the path, wrapped in a cloak and unsteady on his feet. He collapsed. I and Dan looked at each other. No-one else would have seen that as he is so far from the gate, only we were high enough to see him. So we made for the stairs, but realised it was much too slow. We turned, and sprint-jumped straight over the battlements.

Anyone listening to this story would think we were mad, but no, we knew when building this tower it would be laborious to walk down all those stairs, so we applied that the large pool at the centre of the market square was aligned perfectly with the tower battlements. We landed in the middle of it, and swum out, drenched in cold water but we didn't mind. We ran towards the castle gate and called to one of the guards for assistance. We leapt onto our horses and raced them down the road to the still unconscious man. A small group of guards arrived soon after us, and took him to the hospital wing of the castle.

He stayed unconscious for several days, before he awoke full of energy as if nothing had happened. We were on one of our visits to see if he was recovering, when his eyes snapped open and he leapt out of the bed, and shot into a speech. "Hello, Jake and Dan, noble sirs, who I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet, I have brought a message from my master, who is very distraught that you couldn't stay for his games in that arena." He stopped for air. "But fear not, he has many other plans for you. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the mindless destruction! Irilm has many things planned! Hahahahahahahahaha!" he burst into flames and ran straight out onto the balcony, we ran after him, hoping to learn more about this, but he jumped.

I pitied the family that owned the house he landed upon, as the fire from his body spread and burned it to the ground. Luckily, the family escaped. Builders set to work making a new house for them, and I personally declared them to stay in the guest quarters of the castle until it was complete. Then I realised what we had to do. I told Dan to get our things together, and I went down to the deepest part of the castle, the relic cage. The place was mostly empty, as not many relics are easily found.

But there were rare events down there. An end portal, a Beacon, The Powerful obsidian armour, an ender dragon egg, and the rarest of all, kept in a secure bedrock cage that nothing would ever enter, the three sacred diamonds. Sealed inside there was the lost soul of Herobrine, Never to terrorize the world of Minecraft again. In one ignored corner I found what I was looking for. I found the map that, during the events of Herobrine's capture, we discovered that Dan's gift sharer gave us, and took it with me out of that place, and headed back upstairs, ready to get back on the road again.

The map shone with three more locations to visit. We could choose:

The elven village

The Magical workshop

The ancient tree

I think readers can see a Christmas special coming up. Check the polls to choose your favourite location.


	12. Chapter 12: Christmas special prologue

The ancient tree in the Great North of the land was once a place of peace, nature, and freedom for elves and players alike. until one day, when everything just stopped. no-one could tell why, but something stopped. the tree never grew leaves anymore, and the long roads leading to the settlement, once full of people travelling to see it, were empty. no-one came anymore. nothing grew anymore. the days turned sour, and the people turned sour. Upon the realisation that nothing good ever occurred anymore, they spent their days in their homes, barely ever leaving. As they do to this day. little did they know what had happened, nor did they care.

Further in the North, a small event led to the end of a great celebration. A great man was brought low, he lost his spirit, and abandoned the only duty he knew he would be capable of. The entire North soon went sour. and it has stayed that way since. for fifteen years, no-one has entered, and no-one has left. Until now.


End file.
